Water Wars: Drought, Disputes, and Deadly Skirmishes Between Iran and the Taliban

F.M. Shakil Recent border clashes have escalated tensions to a critical point between the Islamic Republic and the Taliban over Iran’s unfulfilled water rights. Do the Taliban have a deeper motive, and what are their demands? Long spells of drought in Afghanistan and southeastern Iran have reignited a decades-old dispute between the two countries over the…

The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions

Francisco R. Rodiguez Executive Summary This paper provides a comprehensive survey and assessment of the literature on the effects of economic sanctions on living standards in target countries. We identify 32 studies that apply quantitative econometric and calibration methods to cross-country and national data in order to assess the impact of economic sanctions on indicators…

The Story of Seven Countries: A Review of US Aggression in West Asia and North Africa

Ali Karbalaei In the 21st century, the U.S. learnt the hard way of its catastrophic foreign military policy in West Asia: From boots on the ground to so-called precision strikes. Washington’s success in destabilizing a continent with terror and destruction over two decades came at the expense of mass civilian casualties?, dead U.S. soldiers, expensive…

Two Decades and $90 Billion US Dollars Later: Dissecting the Afghan Military’s Total Collapse

Kit Klarenberg In February, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an extensive investigation into the spectacular collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ (ANDSF), which the U.S. spent two decades and $90 billion building. In common with previous SIGAR reports, it offers a remarkably uncompromising, no-punches-pulled assessment, exposing corruption, incompetence, lies, and delusion…

Foreign Devils on the Road to Afghanistan

M. K. Bhadrakumar UN Security Council held a meeting on women and peace and security at UN Headquarters, New York, March 7, 2023 On March 7, the western powers huddled together in Paris for a restricted meeting on Taliban and the Afghanistan situation. It was an exclusive meeting of the Special Representatives and Envoys for…

Abandoning Afghanistan is Dangerous for its Neighbors

F.M. Shakil Despite the Taliban’s many shortcomings, only a unified, multilateral approach to negotiating with and recognizing the Islamic Emirate will safeguard the borders of neighboring states. Following the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from Afghanistan in August last year, the Taliban-led schismatic government in Kabul appears to have reached a diplomatic impasse. It seems like its…

Canada is Still Preventing Charities from Bringing Aid to Afghanistan

Owen Schalk Afghan refugees near the Pakistan border. Photo courtesy One Free World International. A staggering 95% of Afghans are not getting enough to eat As Afghanistan struggles to manage the manifold social and economic crises resulting from decades of war and subsequent Western sanctions, the Canadian government is still preventing charities from delivering much-needed…

Reflections on Events in Afghanistan

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR At least 100 children were killed in a terrorist attack at a school in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 30, 2022 41. US brings culture wars to Afghanistan The time has come to pick up threads from my blog of January 27 titled The West co-opts the Taliban. Indeed, the wheel has come full circle…

The US Response to the World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis: Seize and Privatize

Andrés Arauz On August 10, more than 70 economists, including Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, former economy minister for Argentina Martín Guzmán, and myself, sent a letter to President Biden with a simple ask: return Afghanistan’s central bank assets, deposited at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB). In the…

Afghan People Face a Deadly Humanitarian Crisis

Amitabha Roychowdhury As winter approaches, the UN Security Council should set aside differences and urgently focus on how to send assistance to Afghanistan’s impoverished people The massive humanitarian crisis and the perilous condition of the economy in Afghanistan are likely to worsen with the impending onset of the harsh winter season for the second time…

A Eurasian Jigsaw: BRI and INSTC Interconnectivity Will Complete the Puzzle

Pepe Escobar Shrugging off western obstacles, Eurasia’s ambitious connectivity projects helmed by China and Russia are now progressing deep into Asia’s Heartland SAMARKAND – Interconnecting Inner Eurasia is an exercise in Taoist equilibrium: adding piece by piece, patiently, to a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. It takes time, skill, vision, and of course major breakthroughs. A key piece…

White House Finalizes the Theft of Afghanistan’s Foreign Reserves

The Cradle On the first anniversary of the Taliban’s victory against the US-trained army, Washington unilaterally decided to keep $7bln of Afghanistan’s foreign reserves The government of US President Joe Biden has decided not to return Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and suspended talks with Taliban officials over the issue. “We do not see recapitalization of the Afghan central…

How a Missile in Kabul Connects to a Speaker in Taipei

Pepe Escobar Washington’s hard power display of taking out Al-Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri will not be reciprocated by Beijing over Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan. It does however, definitively bury the decades-long era of cooperative US-Chinese relations. This is the way the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) ends, over and over again: not with a bang, but a…

The Empire is Not Done Torturing Afghanistan

Pepe Escobar Photo Credit: The Cradle Despite its resounding defeat, NATO is not quite done with inflicting misery on the land of the Afghans Once upon a time, in a galaxy not far away, the Empire of Chaos launched the so-called “War on Terror” against an impoverished cemetery of empires at the crossroads of Central and South Asia….

Afghanistan: Massive Earthquake Magnifies Existing Crisis

Abayomi Azikiwe During the early morning hours of June 22, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the southeastern region of Afghanistan reportedly killing in excess of 1,000 people. This natural disaster will only compound the existing problems inside the Central Asian nation in the aftermath of a 20-year occupation by the United States and the North…

Why is the US Trying to Provoke a Conflict on the Afghanistan—Tajikistan Border?

Valery Kulikov Ever since the withdrawal of the last US troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the country to the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation), Washington has been unable to come to terms with the loss of its influence in the region. It is therefore doing all it can to…

The Torrid Afghan Spring

Guadi Calvo With the arrival of spring, once again begins what has always been an opportunity to escalate the chronic conflict in Afghanistan, no matter who the opponents are, with new and always lethal actions. The Taliban used this strategy during the twenty years of the US invasion, preserving and strengthening themselves during the hard…

Afghanistan Braces for New War

M. K. BHADRAKUMAR There is media buzz lately about an anti-Taliban insurgency struggling to be born in Afghanistan. A former Afghan army general, Sami Sadat, is returning home as the West’s favourite to don the mantle of leadership of a pan-Afghan “resistance” movement against repressive Taliban rule.  There is a lot of infighting amongst marginalised…